Hedy Lamarr: The Most Beautiful Woman in Film

Photo Insert- between pages 94 and 95

Hedy, eighteen months old. www .Hedy-Lamarr.org. Hedy on a family holiday, aged circa 16. Courtesy of the Filmarchiv Austria , Vienna. As Eva in Ecstasy (1933). Courtesy of the Filmarchiv Austria, Vienna. New York foyer publicity for Ecstasy. Courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. On stage as Sissy. Courtesy of the Filmarchiv Austria, Vienna. A new image in Die Bühne. Author’s private collection. On holiday with Trude Kiesler, 1936. Courtesy of the Filmarchiv Austria, Vienna. With Charles Boyer in Algiers (1938). Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store, Inc. [Left] Lady of the Tropics (1939). Author’s private collection. [Below] Advertisement for Boom Town (1940). Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store, Inc. With Spencer Tracy, Claudette Colbert, and Clark Gable in Boom Town (1940). Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store, Inc. In Comrade X (1940). Courtesy of the Filmarchiv Austria, Vienna. With James Stewart in Come Live with Me (1941). www.Hedy-Lamarr.org. In Ziegfeld Girl (1941). Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store, Inc. With George Montgomery. Author’s private collection. Entertaining the troops at the Hollywood Canteen. Courtesy of the Filmarchiv Austria, Vienna. A glamorous patent. Courtesy of the Filmarchiv Austria, Vienna. [Right] As Tondelayo in White Cargo (1942). Courtesy of the Filmarchiv Austria, Vienna. [Below] With Paul Henreid in The Conspirators (1944). Courtesy of the Filmarchiv Austria, Vienna. In Her Highness and the Bellboy (1945) with Robert Walker. www.Hedy -Lamarr.org. An advertisement for The Strange Woman (1946). Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store, Inc. The star turned director. Courtesy of the Filmarchiv Austria, Vienna. With John Loder in Dishonored Lady (1947). www.Hedy -Lamarr.org. Jamsie’s ninth birthday, with Tony and Denise. Author’s private collection. [Right] Advertising Lucky Strike (1949). Author’s private collection. [Below] Painting on holiday in Southampton (1950). Author’s private collection. Quick sketch (1950). Author’s private collection. The mystery of the missing jewels (1955). The actress told reporters that the missing jewelry was worth about $250,000. Courtesy of the Filmarchiv Austria, Vienna. [Above] Holding a press conference following the shoplifting charge (1966). Author’s private collection. [Right] Hedy in her old age. Courtesy of the Filmarchiv Austria, Vienna. This Dame Is Exotic 95 Comrade X, on the other hand, is set almost entirely in the Soviet Union. Its cast was its main attraction, but they carried an unexpected seriousness that disturbs the light tone of what was intended as a routine screwball comedy. Another talented immigrant and former Max Reinhardt protégé, the Viennese Oscar Homolka, played Commissar Vasiliev as a Stalin look-alike, while the German émigré, Sig Ruman, appeared as Von Hofer, a humorless, monocled Prussian. The local Russians are charming, double-crossing scoundrels. Gable plays McKinley B. Thompson , an easygoing journalist by day and Western spy (Comrade X) by night. Hedy makes her entrance as Golubka, the cable-car driver, as did Garbo, in drab, communist clothing. She is known, she explains, as Theodore since the workers’ council only lets men drive cars. This plot device allowed Adrian to dress the star in startlingly androgynous clothing. Her father, played by Felix Bressart, knows that the wind of orthodox thought is turning against his daughter and blackmails Thompson to sneak her out of Russia to convert her to good, democratic, American values. To secure her exit visa, Comrade X has to marry her. Of course, he falls in love with the Russian, their romance signaled by a series of slapstick sequences that suggested Hedy’s talent for comedy, hinted at in her Weimar films, might transfer to Hollywood. In a bizarre plot twist, the two are thrown in a Soviet jail, where they witness innocent men and women being led by the guards to their deaths. This is a truly chilling sequence, quite at odds with its preceding light-hearted comedy. For all its slapstick, Comrade X is a much darker film than Ninotchka, if less conventionally constructed, even to the point of incoherence (notably the tank chase at the end). It is as if, for once, the émigré mind-set could not quite render world affairs as a...